


Survivors

by jedishampoo



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: F/M, Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 20:17:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedishampoo/pseuds/jedishampoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hakkai takes the girl home. She reminds him of someone, except for the still being alive part. Set during Saiyuki Reload Vol. 5.  (Hakkai/OFC)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survivors

**Author's Note:**

> Again, I'm archiving some of my older fics onto the AO3. 
> 
> Het OMG! Angst OMG! Written by prompt of sharpeslass as detailed on the birthday fic coupon that I foolishly gifted her with. ;) She wanted Hakkai gettin’ it on with a grateful rescuee, and so here it is. Man, this was tough for me to write!

  
Hakkai was more than happy to leave the party for a little while, even if it was being held-- somewhat-- in his honor. Hazel was entertaining the townspeople perfectly well as the hero of the evening, so well that Hakkai had begun to feel rather ill. So when the girl, Lienhua, asked him for a ride home, he agreed.   
  
Hakkai had been watching her-- watching all the girls they’d rescued-- in small glances throughout the evening. She, he was most worried about. She’d seemed even more out of place at this celebration than he had felt. She’d grimaced generally at the townspeople, who should have been her people. She’d barely touched her food, and had brushed her blonde hair away from her tired face, over and over like an obsession.   
  
He’d wondered when the aftereffects of her ordeal might overcome her; she’d seemed almost too calm earlier. When Gojyo had sliced her kidnappers into bits the other girls had screamed and wept, but Lienhua had hunched in the corner and watched with wide eyes as the writhing, spurting bodies had flopped to the ground. Then she’d smiled. Hakkai knew what sort of thoughts those quiet, grim smiles could hide.   
  
Goku was digging into the buffet, and he waved Hakkai off with a face-stuffing grin. And so Hakkai left to do what he always did: return people to their ruined lives.   
  
Lienhua’s tired demeanor seemed to dissipate the moment they stepped outside the inn. She released her white-knuckled grip holding the borrowed jacket-- one of Gojyo’s-- closed over the tiny bikini top they’d found her in, and stretched out her arms.  
  
“Thank god I’m outta there,” she said, and took a deep breath. She looked up at the thick wildflower field of stars stretched across the breadth of the moonless sky. The early spring night was cool but clear and windless. The streets were quiet as everyone celebrated at the inn. “I didn’t want to walk home.”  
  
Hakkai held open Jeep’s passenger door. “Do you live alone?”  
  
“Now I do, I guess. Except for my cat. My roommate Min and her boyfriend were with me when they got us. But they killed him, and she died after a couple of days,” Lienhua said as she climbed in.   
  
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Hakkai said, neutrally.   
  
“Yeah. I was really pissed off about it, too. She was all like ‘We can’t live like this’ and threw herself on one of the dudes’ knives. Stupid bitch. I’m proof you can live like that, and get through it, right?”  
  
“Ah.” Hakkai didn’t ask her what “like that” had involved.   
  
In the beginning of their journey it had all seemed so simple: stop the minus calamity, restore the peace. He and Sanzo and Gojyo and Goku would save people, a few at a time, until their mission was complete. The first town they’d rescued had given them hope. They’d left young Houmei with the thought that youkai weren’t all bad, despite the fact that she’d seen her friends murdered and been dangled in the air by a spider-monster.  
  
But Yakumo had spoken aloud what they’d all perhaps been wondering. One man could be forgiven-- he himself was proof of that. But mass murder on a racial scale? That sort of upheaval took generations to heal, if it could even be healed. Hakkai would probably never see it in his lifetime. Lienhua and the others in her town never would, either.   
  
Hakkai wasn’t even sure sometimes about his own feelings on the matter. Forgiving the dead was often a useless endeavor. It was all very confusing. Being alive was exhilarating and utterly terrifying.   
  
“Ah,” Hakkai said again, rather than say those other things.  
  
Silence drifted over them while Hakkai and Jeep navigated the narrow town streets. Hakkai wasn’t sure if it was a comfortable silence or not. He’d spent too long in the sole company of people he knew too well to remember how to gauge a stranger’s reactions in close company. He glanced her way now and then. She seemed cheerful enough, looking around at the town she hadn’t seen for several weeks with perhaps not pleasure, but at least not displeasure.  
  
“Where is your family?” Hakkai asked her, breaking the silence. He wished she had just cried with the other girls in the arms of the townspeople who’d missed them.   
  
“You guys are lucky to have a car.” Lienhua didn’t answer his question, but grinned and fluffed her hair in the wind as Jeep picked up speed along the main road out of town.   
  
“Are they still alive?” Hakkai asked, upgrading the quiet force of his smile when she looked at him.  
  
“You hardly ever see them out here in the country,” she continued, eyes wide and guileless.  
  
“It’s all right if you don’t want to say.”  
  
“I bet if we’d had one, we coulda outrun those assholes,” she said.   
  
“We are lucky,” Hakkai said.  
  
“Up there-- it’s a dead end,” she said, and pointed.  
  
“Not forever,” Hakkai said.  
  
Lienhua stared at him for a moment and then burst out with a laugh. “How many conversations are we having here, anyway?”  
  
“Two, I think,” Hakkai said, and his smile relaxed for a moment, felt real. “Maybe more. Do I go left?”  
  
“Left,” she said. “All the way to the end.”  
  
There weren’t many houses out along the soft-dirt road to her home, which lurked all peeling white and darkened windows and lonely at the dead end. He pulled up to the edge of the yard because there was no driveway. Lienhua opened the side door before he had a chance to open it for her and hopped down onto the patchy grass. She put her hands on her hips, looking impossibly small in the too-large jacket, and looked first at the house and then at him as he shut the driver’s-seat door.  
  
“I suppose this has to be ‘see ya,’” she said, brushing her hair out of her eyes once more. “Thank you.”  
  
Hakkai tried not to look at the way the jacket hung open, exposing the skimpy top and the way her breasts nearly fell out of it. Her bare skin was goose-bumped, but otherwise fresh and unscarred. _Exhilarating and terrifying._ That soft flesh had never been meant to fight, yet had done so in its own way. Hakkai looked instead at the vicinity of her right ear. “Are you going to be all right here, alone?” he asked.  
  
“I’ll try not to throw myself on a knife or anything.”   
  
“Please don’t say that,” Hakkai said.  
  
“It was just a joke.” She narrowed her eyes at him, like she was reading a book that she just didn’t understand. “Wanna come in? If you do, I could give you the clothes back.”  
  
Hakkai patted Jeep’s hood, not looking at her. “Ah ha ha. Goku and Gojyo will appreciate that,” he said. He’d already decided that he _would_ go in whether she wanted him to or not, just to be sure everything was as she’d left it. And to hide the knives.  
  
“Me, too.”  
  
When Hakkai looked at Lienhua again she was grinning widely, her eyes brighter and she looking younger and prettier than he’d yet seen her. Hakkai wondered what she was feeling, to produce such a smile. Relief? Happiness that someone actually cared?  
  
 _Saving people a few at a time_. Hakkai was reminded of a little girl gazing in adoration at Sanzo, glee uncrushed in the face of his surly exterior. Hakkai was no Sanzo. He smiled back. “Do you still have a key?”  
  
“In the same place everyone keeps one,” Lienhua said, shuffling across the grass in her ragged pants-- Goku’s-- to bend over near the doorstep. It appeared that yes, typically, the key was stored under a dead, potted plant on the stoop. “Though only me and Min and... uh, well... the neighbor are supposed to know. So where do you all come from? A city? A big city? How do you know each other? And I don’t mean the priest guy and the big guy.”  
  
Hakkai wondered if perhaps she was merely chattering to keep her mind off her dead friend. She hadn’t seemed overly curious about them, earlier, whereas the other girls had asked a myriad of questions. Hazel had given the rescuees and townspeople his usual speech about his holy mission. Usually that was enough for most people-- the famous Sanzo party and the increasingly famous Priest Hazel party, doing what they did. Hakkai watched the slight twitch in her fingers as she shoved the key into the doorknob. Her hands were dirty.   
  
Ruined lives. Leaving. _Goodbye. Nothing personal, Miss._  
  
“Up until a little over a year ago, I lived in Chang’An. In the east. Gojyo and I shared a little house.”  
  
“I’ve heard of Chang’An, but that’s it,” she said as she opened the door. “Here, Shishi. Shishi! Mommy’s home!”  
  
Hakkai’s breastbone clenched for a moment as her words conjured up the vision of a child, left alone in the dark. Then he remembered her cat.  
  
“Here, Shishi! Here, kitty!” Lienhua practically jogged into the dark house. Hakkai halted inside the door and looked for a light-switch. He pressed a square on the wall and soft gaslamps flickered to life. Lienhua had already disappeared into another room, but he could hear her calling.  
  
“Shishi! Where’s my kitty? Eeeeeeyaagh!”  
  
“What is it?” Hakkai’s heart panicked again at Lienhua’s shrill scream. He ran after the sound of her voice and found her in a tiny, dusty kitchen, staring at a pair of empty bowls on the floor. Hakkai only hesitated a moment before touching her slumped shoulder through Gojyo’s jacket. She didn’t flinch, but she was shaking.   
  
“Asshole couldn’t even feed my fucking cat? Son of a bitch. I hate this fucking place!” Lienhua kicked at a cat-flap set low into the back door.  
  
Hakkai wanted to say something carefree, like _Ahahah, such language. I’m sure she’s fine_ , but he didn’t. His gentle touch on her slim shoulder turned into a squeeze. “Perhaps when she sees the lights on, she’ll come back,” he said in a quiet voice.  
  
“Yeah.” Lienhua swiveled and spread her arms. Hakkai stilled and waited. Was she going to hold him, to weep at last? But she only clutched his arms for a fraction of a second, then released him and looked up. She was very close. “He.”  
  
“Where is his food?” Hakkai asked.  
  
“Pantry,” Lienhua said after staring at him for a moment or two. “There’s also tea. Would you make some? Or maybe we’ve-- I’ve-- got some booze left in there. Will you stay for a little while I take a shower? Give me a few minutes of company? And think up something good to tell me about Chang’An. I gotta get out of here, someday.”  
  
“Ah ha hah, I should be--” Hakkai started, then stopped. “Yes. I’ll stay. For a little while.”  
  
“Oh, God, thank you so much. I just gotta get clean. I didn’t get many showers in the ‘fortress.’”  
  
“Whatever you need to do,” Hakkai said.  
  
There was an awkward _shall-we-dance_ moment when she moved to walk around him and he stepped in the same direction, but after a couple of tries she made it out of the kitchen. Hakkai found the pantry and pulled out a bag of tea and a bottle of amber-colored liquor. He brushed away a few cobwebs, then filled the teapot and set it on the gas stove to boil. He rinsed the cat’s bowls and filled them with fresh food and water. There were clean glasses and cups in the cabinet. Dull knives stacked neatly in the drawer. Women on their own certainly lived differently from men. From Gojyo, anyway.  
  
Hakkai thought briefly about the others, waiting for them in the next, bigger town. Gojyo was probably getting chattier and his chat filthier as he waited with the taciturn duo of Sanzo and Gat. Sanzo’s reasons for involving them in this rescue were a bit mystifying, but his reasons for splitting them all up weren’t. They were keeping an eye on their new-- comrades? By being here, was Hakkai not holding up his end of Sanzo’s bargain?   
  
It didn’t matter. Hakkai was keeping an eye on one of the important people in this mess, one of the people often forgotten or ignored. He certainly would have liked it if someone other than he had cared what had happened to Kanan.  
  
And there it was. Lienhua reminded him of Kanan. So now that was out of the way, he could move ahead with whatever he needed to do.  
  
It involved sitting on her couch, sipping alternately at whiskey and tea, listening to the muffled splash of water from a room away, and looking around the tiny living room. He could see a few weeks’ dust, cat hair on the couch, some dead flowers. Otherwise it was neat and tidy, with a few feminine things scattered about the walls and the two little tables next to the couch and chair. Hakkai wondered if he should help her clean the intruding dust.  
  
“I haven’t been this warm in weeks,” came Lienhua’s voice. She emerged through the doorway covered in a mostly-decent robe, combing her wet hair. “When they wanted us clean they only had cold-- well, you saw that place. I probably shouldn’t be talking about it, should I?”  
  
“I’m glad you feel better,” Hakkai said. She plopped onto the couch next to him. Upon further examination, her robe wasn’t as decent as he’d first thought. It was thin...ish. Her upper chest had lost its goose bumps and gained a pink, hot-water sheen. Her knees and calves glistened-- lotion? She smelled feminine. Perfume-y. A lovely scent that Hakkai had gotten used to living without. It reminded him of things that had seemed forbidden at one time.  
  
“Oh, thank God. Tea and booze. They had crappy taste in wine, too,” she said. Unconsciously mimicking him, she first grabbed the little glass of whiskey and took a healthy gulp, then set the glass down and picked up the tea, blowing on it before taking a sip.  
  
To distract himself from her damp skin, Hakkai talked.   
  
“It’s a large city with a large, famous Buddhist temple. Sanzo and Goku lived there. Gojyo and I shared a small house. I had a tutoring job. I didn’t make much money but I enjoyed it.”  
  
“Any opportunities for girls there? Kinda stupid girls with a primary-school education and a lot of experience waiting tables?”  
  
“Ah. There’s a good college. Gojyo would know about the waitressing jobs.”  
  
She drank more of the whiskey. “The tall, good-lookin’ redhead? I’ll bet. He’s got his eye on the girls, I can tell.”  
  
So did Hakkai, he discovered to his shame. She caught him taking a lingering look at her pink cleavage as she bent over to set her glass on the table. She didn’t look upset about it at all; in fact, it seemed her brown eyes held a shrewd gleam as she considered him.  
  
“Pardon me,” Hakkai said. There was no use denying the fact that he’d ogled her.  
  
“The whiskey tastes funny because I brushed my teeth,” Lienhua half-whispered, still staring at him. She pressed a light palm against his chest. “Still tastes good, though. Thank you.”  
  
 _What an odd thing to say_ , Hakkai thought. He leaned a tiny bit away from her, out of her soft orbit of perfume and wet skin and gratitude, wondering why he hadn’t removed her warm little hand from his shirt. “You’re welcome.”  
  
She’d noticed him leaning back. It was her chance to show him that she wasn’t being suggestive. Instead, she pressed his chest a little more firmly. “How far west are you guys going? Are you ever coming back this way?” she asked in her new, quiet, wondering voice.  
  
“Far, and I don’t know,” Hakkai whispered back. “I don’t think you are stupid at all.”  
  
“I’m not, really. And you’re better-looking than your friend,” she said. Her gaze left his, wandering down to stare instead at his chin. Or his mouth. Her hand slid temptingly down, nearly brushing his hidden scar. Her words, gestures and meaning had evolved from suggestive into unmistakable. Hakkai felt his muscles twitch all-too-pleasantly at the unfamiliar, soft touch. His shame knew no bounds. She became a little blurry up so close, even in his good eye. “You have a girlfriend somewhere?”   
  
“No, but I think you’re overwrought.” Hakkai removed her fingers from his belly, clasping them slightly to show that he wasn’t angry. “You’ve had an incredibly difficult time and I think you should--”  
  
Lienhua clasped his fingers back and gave him a short eye-roll. “You’re not a psychology tutor or something, are you?”  
  
“Ah hah hah. No. But I’ve taken some classes. You’re probably feeling very vulnerable, and while you are very lovely, any sort of... would be taking sick advantage of you--”  
  
She _pfted_ a breath from between her pink lips, blowing pale strands of her drying hair to mingle with his.  
  
“So what you’re saying is, I can fuck those losers to stay alive, but I can’t do something nice with the nice guy who saved me? Someone I _like_?”  
  
Hakkai felt that hard, wrenching thump under his breastbone again. She’d brought that out in him several times already, this evening. That, and his shocked candor.  
  
“That’s blackmail,” he told her.  
  
“I know.”   
  
Hakkai was a little less taken aback at this admission than he probably ought to have been, as Lienhua’s manner of _being herself_ settled into an odd sort of rhythm in Hakkai’s brain. Whether she was entirely sane or not, he’d underestimated her. And understood her. Somehow that thought was more arousing than her nearness, her damp skin or her scent.  
  
“Something _nice_. Ha ha. I appreciate your truthfulness,” he told her.   
  
“Well, I appreciate... well, you, I guess.” She backed up little, unblurring enough for him to see the now-skeptical slant of her eyebrows. “I mean, if you’re not interested, just tell me. I am sorta trashed goods, now.”  
  
“Oh, God, please don’t say that,” Hakkai told her, aching pity joining his amusement and arousal to swirl around into a hot little mixture that seeped into his limbs in a way he hadn’t felt in a very long time.  
  
Her look clearly said, _well, shut me up, then._  
  
Hakkai stared at her for a few nonplussed moments, all his shame now focused on how long it was taking him to make the next move, whatever it was going to be. Part of him was leaning towards ‘okay.’ _There were many ways of helping people_ , he thought. Then he realized that was a crass rationalization. He _was_ attracted to her, whether he’d been blackmailed into it or not.   
  
It was a good thing, because he hadn’t the heart to snub her further. Once that decision was made, he shifted on the couch to face her more straight-on. And stared at her. The expectant, _shut-me-up_ look in her eyes began to waver into more of an _oh-God-what-have-I-done?_ look.  
  
It was too bad, really, that she’d chosen him and not Gojyo. Gojyo knew women; he would have made her laugh with indignance and when it came down to touching her, he would have known what to do to make her happy. Gojyo left all his women happy.   
  
_No_ , Hakkai told himself. Lienhua was not unlucky. He, Hakkai, was the lucky one; only clumsy and screwed-up. He released her hand and set his palm on her cheek, wet from her hair.  
  
Lienhua helped, leaned forward until her nose bumped his lips and he had to lift her chin to kiss her. It felt very nice. Soft. She had brushed her teeth and tasted minty and musky, like toothpaste and liquor. Exhilarating and terrifying. Other people did this every day. It was only Hakkai who’d managed to twist his last love affair into something shunned by most right-thinking people. That didn’t mean he hadn’t enjoyed it. Very much.  
  
His belly twitched under his scar. _Very nice_. He pushed forward to kiss her more firmly. His body remembered what to do, even if his mind was hurrying to catch up and savor the experience.   
  
After a few minutes there was more catching up than he’d expected; somehow he was half-laying over her on the couch, pressing the back of her head into the couch-arm, mere thin fabric over hard wood. And still he was kissing her, letting his tongue remember the feel of another person’s mouth in slow sweeps.   
  
_How easy_. He hardly knew her. But it was more than comfortable; he sank a little further into her warm little body, sliding his knee into the widening curve of her thighs. When his cock throbbed to life it was as instant and as painful and urgent as in his dreams; long denial and longer memory? In dreams it was frightening and yet freeing, with no one to hurt. Still, she clutched at his shoulders with sharp squeezes, egging him on.   
  
_Too easy_. Hakkai pulled his tongue out of her mouth for a moment and realized he was breathless. “It’s been a very long time,” he whispered at her, to apologize for... for whatever he was sure he’d done. For being too slow, too fast? For being a horrible person?  
  
Lienhua sighed in what looked like bliss, her eyelashes fluttering on her cheeks.   
  
“‘Sokay. I’ve had enough of rough.”  
  
For being too slow, maybe. Hakkai ignored the sick little twitch in his gut at her words, because he couldn’t explain it. “Ah hah hah,” he hemmed, then thought it inappropriate. Had the youkai locked the women up when they weren’t using them? Or had the girls been forced to lay next to their captors all night, thinking of ways to kill them? _He_ was youkai. What would he have done?   
  
Wait: _he_ was youkai. And she had no idea.  
  
How easy it had been, to forget himself and his own nature so completely. Forest for the trees and all that, but still, no excuse for pretending to be normal, for delighting in her warm, wet female skin. He’d already reached under her robe to stroke it, slick, soft and enticing. She moaned so pleasingly when he traced her breastbone all the way to her navel.  
  
He could tell her. He _should_ tell her. When had he developed such a selfish streak? The guilt should have killed his erection. It hadn’t, not in the slightest.  
  
“My head does hurt, though,” she said after a bit and wriggled under him, pushing his shoulders back until he relented and pulled her up into a sitting position beside him. Her wet hair was sticking up in places. She was smiling. He felt flushed, untidy.  
  
“I’m very sorry,” he said automatically.   
  
“Don’t be.” Some of his guilt drained when she pressed his erection through his pants with unshy surety. There was that acute, exciting ache again, that shameless throbbing. “Ha! You look all formal with your clothes on and your-- eyeglass thing.”  
  
“I suppose I do.” It was his chance to say something else, something more truthful. He could tell her he was youkai; she’d be horrified and fearful at last, and he could escape, having done his duty and left her as terrified and grief-stricken as possible. A few moments alone behind a tree somewhere with his memories would hurt no one but himself. “It’s a monocle.”  
  
“Don’t get me wrong. You’re hot.” Lienhua stopped torturing his crotch and he felt her hand at his chest, playing with his shirt-buttons. “So. How long’s it been?”  
  
“Ah.” _Since shortly before I became youkai?_ was the answer that came to his lips but was quickly stifled. Telling her such a thing would serve no purpose at this point. He’d always been selfish, when offered something he wanted. “Three, four years?”  
  
“Wow. But somehow I think you’re telling the truth.”  
  
“I am.” He needed to do something other than sit there like an idiot. _Quickly_ , his body requested. It really was a shame she hadn’t chosen Gojyo.  
  
Her robe was all askew, the opening wrenched sideways so that he could see just the droop of one breast, that pink skin he’d noticed earlier, and one thigh, exposed clear to her waist. One pull on the robe-tie was all it would take. An expanse of flesh to explore and bury himself in, wanted, alive.   
  
His longer, stronger fingers brushed hers as he popped the buttons to his tunic. Though he’d had long practice taking off the same traveling clothes every night in every inn or every campsite for a year, there had been no spectators. He fumbled a bit, trying not to look too eager or clumsy.  
  
Was he too slow again? Lienhua clutched at his knee for balance as she slipped off the couch to the floor. She kneeled between his legs and unbuttoned his pants. His erection popped out of his jeans gratefully, looking like it felt: hard, dark with blood, desperate. She looked so... happy, to see such a thing, her brown eyes smiling along with her pink lips when she looked up at him. So eager to touch him, to rub fingers on his bare, aching skin, after such an experience. Would _she_ have been so?  
  
“Why don’t you... lift your butt so I can pull these down?”  
  
A ridiculous question for a ridiculous situation. Still, he arched his back from the couch and pulled his shirt off at the same time, knocking his monocle askew as he did so. By the time he’d straightened it again she was staring at his lower half.  
  
“Wow.”  
  
Hakkai wondered if he should be embarrassed. He wondered what she was staring at. But it seemed she was examining his scar, looking at it so closely he could feel her warm, puffing breaths on the head of his cock. For an instant he imagined his hand on the back of her head, pressing her down towards it; but that was only one horrified moment. When she touched the old wound his stomach muscles twitched visibly.  
  
  
“A bit trashed myself. Haha,” he said, when her fingertips skimmed its uneven, dark ridges.  
  
She actually seemed grateful for the feeble joke. “Well, you survived it, whatever it was. Does it hurt, Hakkai?”  
  
It was the first time she’d said his name to him since their brief introductions: _Thank you, Mr. What’s-Your-Name. I’m Hakkai. Cho Hakkai. Thank you, Mr. Cho Hakkai. Can we get out of here? That priest creeps me out. Which one, haha?_  
  
“No, it doesn’t hurt much, anymore.”  
  
“Oh. Good.” For all Lienhua’s brashness she was soft, scarred. Scared? He wanted her, anyway. He did what he’d pictured in his mind, earlier: pulled on the sash to her robe, slowly _I’ve had enough of rough_. She leaned back as he did it, her robe slipping off and catching on her nipples before it slid down to her sides.   
  
She was spread open, sweet-smelling, alive, human. And lying on the floor. Well, at least it was carpeted, he reasoned, with no wooden chair-arm to knock either of their heads. He stepped out of his pants and kneeled over her, looking not at her face but at her body, the slight, dark hair on his leg next to her smooth one. What next?  
  
If he’d been given one last chance to touch Kanan, what would he have done? Grabbed her, probably; crushed her in a thankful embrace and not let go for hour, days, weeks. Smothered her. Bound her to him until she realized her life did not belong only to herself.  
  
His over-thinking of the issue was the ridiculous part. He’d been told before that was one of his problems. But he was overcoming it; already he’d sort of fallen onto Lienhua’s naked body until their skin was touching everywhere, and she was moaning and stroking his spine, petting his head. Already he was caressing her slick skin, appreciating what she’d offered him with no strings. That was a lie, of course. There were always strings, but they’d survived everything else and there he was, thinking too much again.  
  
His hands wanted to grab but he kept them slow, gentle, thumbs delighting in the soft flow of her breast as he traced the undersides, the sweep of her waist and hips. He kissed her under her ear and she shivered all over at once. Amazing that after what she’d been through she still took delight in this. In him. She had nearly become dead flesh, soulless yet moving. If Hazel had killed and reanimated her, would her body have still wanted him, a dead thing seeking comfort from the alien soul inside it?   
  
_Well done_ , he thought at her, and kissed her with his eyes open. He was glad her eyes were brown and not yellow.   
  
His cock was not interested in her eyes. It was drawn to the indentation of her hip, pulling him down so that he had to force his hips back. Restraint and soft skin warred until he was rocking his hips in tiny, teasing then satisfying movements. He brushed his thumb through the light, damp hairs between her thighs and felt one of her legs kick. Their noses bumped.  
  
“Oh!”  
  
Something hit the back of his leg. It was one of the pillows from the couch, kicked loose. He grabbed it and slapped it onto the floor next to her head.  
  
“That is for me,” he said, and rolled over onto it, pulling her atop him. She sat up and straddled his thighs, laughing.   
  
“Such a nice guy,” she said. “Nice to have a choice.”  
  
 _Nice_. Her lower belly was glistening from where his shameless, dripping cock had already become over-stimulated. It thrust up between them, rising out of their mingled dark and light hairs to beg and twitch against her stomach. He grabbed her hips and yanked, hinting none too gently, because he feared wasn’t going to last long enough to give her any choice. Instead of doing what he wanted she wrapped her fingers around his erection.   
  
“Clean, too. Those assholes weren’t. Glad I showered.”  
  
He was too far gone to be shocked or even amused at her candidness. “I thought I’d let you--”  
  
“Nice guy.” Her grabbing turned into stroking. Hakkai was already too tight, all his muscles clenched from his neck down. No, even his jaw was tight; he was one long nerve stretched to his curling toes, centered on her stroking fingers. His bottom arched into the carpet, trying to escape her fingers because he’d never be able--  
  
“Please sto-- Ah!”  
  
Hakkai gritted his teeth but still he climaxed, spurting on her and himself.  
  
“Oops,” Lienhua said. Her wet hair was still sticking up, adding to her aura of amused surprise. “Well, you did say.”  
  
“I’m--” he began, then a shock of cold rationality surged into his brain and body. He stared at her with his mouth open, feeling foolish. His position was foolish, his nudity was foolish. He was hard-pressed to explain such astonishing lack of control in himself, a practitioner of chi. For a few, strange moments she was an alien being, unfamiliar and reminiscent at the same time. Exhilarating and terrifying.  
  
“What?” she asked after his outburst of silence.  
  
“Too embarrassed to continue speaking.”  
  
Lienhua grinned. “Not a setback. If you’ve got a few more minutes. No! Stay there.” He’d tried to sit up but she pressed his belly to hold him. Shameless enough for both of them, she clenched and unclenched her fingers, rubbing his ejaculate into his stomach, spreading the sticky white and dulling the angry purple edges of his scar. Above him her breasts dangled through her open robe, splashed with more evidence of his rather violent climax. The sight was shockingly erotic. “You’re too cute.”  
  
“Now I’m even more humiliated,” Hakkai said, not being entirely truthful. Almost without thought he caught one of her swaying breasts and brushed his own semen into the perfumed skin. Lienhua closed her eyes and leaned hard into his touch, sliding her bottom against his thighs. He felt tugging at his hair and realized his own eyes were closed.  
  
“Oh, crap. Now it’s in your hair, too. Feels kinda sexy. God, your hair is soft,” she whispered.   
  
“Is it?” Hakkai murmured, understanding at last what she was doing, what he was doing. Already his skin, gone cold from post-premature release and rationale, was warming again.   
  
“Yeah.”  
  
The warmth was relaxing; Hakkai pushed against the couch with his foot and stretched his leg. Lienhua shifted to bear down on it, clenching it between her thighs.   
  
“Clean?” Hakkai said, bending his knee for her. The moist heat between her legs burned a little trail down the skin of his thigh, back and forth. The realization had been rather anticlimactic, so much so that he was only shocked that he’d not seen it before. It was all so _her_ and made perfectly vulgar and completely arousing sense.   
  
“Yeah. Guess I’ve dirtied it up, though.”  
  
“I’ll survive,” Hakkai told her. That arousal turned the warmth back into a pleasant, softly thumping tightness that spread throughout his limbs. He pushed his hand between her and his thigh, curling one finger against her moist cleft. She cried out and collapsed forward a little, bumping his nose again but never ceasing her back and forth, back and forth. Hakkai opened his eyes to watch her intent expression, the wisps of her drying blonde hair swinging over her cheeks.  
  
“God, you’re so hot. I bet you’re covered in cat-hair, too.”  
  
“Probably,” Hakkai said. What had Kanan learned without him that had horrified her so? Given the chance, he’d have let her show him. He was youkai, and screwed-up. He could have taken that punishment. He was not selfish at all. The thought was very freeing and un-terrifying.   
  
That pleasant throbbing had reached his cock and it jerked against her belly, returning to sharp, aching life. Lienhua felt it and opened her eyes to look at him.   
  
“Oh, good. You’re easy, too, huh?”  
  
“Apparently,” Hakkai told her.   
  
“Slut,” Lienhua said.  
  
“Ha, yes.” He caught her at the waist and lifted her a little so he could roll her without tossing her to the carpet, which he knew was not so soft after a few minutes. Then he slid the pillow under her head before he crawled back atop her. “How is this?”  
  
“Perfect,” she said, and yanked his hair, pulling his head down.   
  
Her mouth still tasted like toothpaste and liquor, already familiar and yet novel enough to remain more than exciting. Hakkai felt her slick thighs spread and slide over his hips. He gripped her waist again and squeezed, pressing his thumbs into the giving flesh of her belly. Had the men impregnated her in their defilement? That, he could not erase by being _nice_. He could, in fact, become culpable.  
  
Unselfish he may have been but still he was male, and thoroughly, appallingly stimulated by the thought. His cock shuddered against her skin. He had to pull back from her a bit to position himself just so, rather than bumping clumsily, achingly, at the slick, soft folds between her legs.   
  
“Hurry it up!” Lienhua begged, arching her hips from the floor and pressing her ankles into his ass, not making his job any easier. “Oh, God, I’m the slut, right?”  
  
“No,” Hakkai gasped as his fingers and his cock found their way and he pushed, squeezing himself gratefully, finally, into a clenching, female heat he’d missed very, very much. “You’re all right. Everything’s going to be all right,” he babbled at her.  
  
“That’s what you--oh! Said. Before.”  
  
Hakkai barely heard her because he was concentrating on everything at once: the flowered scent of her hair as he sank down and buried his face in her shoulder; the thump of his heart in his chest, beating in time with the rhythmic slide of his hips; the pattern in her carpet and the way the gold flecks in its brown matched her hair. How nice.  
  
“Uh-huh,” he breathed.  
  
“Oh! That’s good. God. There was blood everywhere.”  
  
He was aware of her words mostly as sharp, hot breaths in his ear, matching his own gasps. Into the carpet. How uncharitable and selfish of him. It only took a little effort to shift his head to kiss her. The gesture was meant to be kind and comforting but was turned by her wide mouth into a mad scrambling to get into her everywhere at once. Her nails dug into the back of his head, dirtying him even more with her sticky fingers.  
  
Hakkai just moved, dimly glad of his earlier release because it meant he could make the sensation last longer, feel each clenching thrust in and slick pull out.  
  
Lienhua mumbled incomprehensibly into his mouth until he had to pull away and breathe. Alternately she defiled him and urged him on until her words trailed off into sharp gasps. After a while his knees burned on the carpet. He propped himself up to gain leverage, tangling his fingers into her hair spread out on the floor. Then he could push deeper, faster, hard, tight and hot. Lienhua twisted her head and shoved her tongue onto his wrist.  
  
“Ah!” Hakkai cried out as his testicles clenched with brutal force and he nearly climaxed again. A pause and a couple of deep breaths steadied him and he regained his pace, concentrating on letting her do what she needed. He hoped very much that she did it quickly.  
  
“Hakkai from Chang’An,” she mumbled wetly into his ridged veins.  
  
Hakkai would have spoken back to her but was afraid of what he might say when so vulnerable. Instead he gritted his teeth and focused on the clutch of her fingers at his hips, the soft give of her willingly given body, and the burning that arced down his spine and stung his knees. With his free hand he trailed a line of sweat down her belly, then slid his palm back to catch the bounce of her breast as she arched off the floor with his thrusts.  
  
In an instant Lienhua’s body spasmed, her thighs and fingers grabbing at him arrhythmically. “ _Nngh_. Oh!” she cried, and after a few moments her arched back slammed limply to the floor. Hakkai released the tight clench of his teeth.  
  
“Thankyou,” he whispered. It only took a couple more thrusts of build before he could let his body tip over that tight edge. The arc in his spine spilled out in a hot rush.  
  
Full cold rationality returned a little more slowly the second time around and Hakkai was grateful. It gave him a chance to catch his breath and to wait for Lienhua to relax her death-grip upon on. He smiled at her when she opened her eyes and focused on him.  
  
“Your eye-thingum fell off,” she breathed, and fluffed his hair.  
  
“Monocle,” Hakkai repeated, and checked for the familiar weight on his nose. It was indeed missing. “So it has.”  
  
After a few more deep breaths, Lienhua wriggled under him and Hakkai eased some of his weight off her. His limp flesh slid out with a rather embarrassing _slurp._  
  
Thankfully she didn’t mention it. “You look good like that. I can see both your eyes,” she told him. She released his hair and he rolled his sticky, sweaty, and utterly relaxed body onto the floor next to her. She held her hand in front of her eyes, then looked over at him. “Even if you are covered in cat hair.”  
  
“That washes off,” Hakkai pointed out.   
  
“I’m sure I look like hell,” she sighed at the ceiling.  
  
Her words produced the old, hard ache in his chest; Hakkai felt instantly terrible that he hadn’t been equally as complimentary. She did look lovely, even covered in cat-hair and sweat, but it would not be kind to point that out quite so truthfully. He did not wish again, however, that she’d been left with Gojyo.  
  
“You never have yet,” he said in a quiet voice.  
  
They’d both been staring at the ceiling for a minute or so when there was a rustling noise in the other room. They sat up in alarmed unison. Lienhua stood and started running for the kitchen.  
  
“Wait!” Hakkai called after her. Considering the life he’d been living, it could have been anything. Had he put her in danger? He, too, jumped to his feet and was about to follow her when he heard her delighted shriek.  
  
“Shishi! Kitty! Shishi’s back!”  
  
Not an emergency, then, but a happy reunion. Hakkai took the few moments alone to pull on his clothes and his monocle, noting that indeed he was sticky and fuzzy in some very inconvenient places. He hoped he’d helped her, in some small way. She’d certainly given him something very pleasant in return, and it hadn’t only been physical.  
  
“Your other mommy’s not here, anymore, but I’m here. God, you need a brushing.”  
  
Hakkai grabbed Lienhua’s robe from the floor and joined her in the kitchen. She was kneeling, naked, and holding a largish, grayish cat in her arms.  
  
“This is Shishi,” Lienhua said, waving a dirty gray paw at Hakkai. She released the cat to his food bowl and took the robe. “Thanks.”  
  
“I’m very glad that you won’t be alone,” he said.  
  
“You really gotta--” She stopped at the look in his eyes. “Then I guess this is ‘see ya,’ really. Oh, let me get that out of your hair, first.”  
  
It was a sensible suggestion. Hakkai bowed his head and let her fiddle in his hair with a damp cloth. Her perfumed scent had changed, been invaded by the smell of sweat and semen. He smelled much the same, much like the girls had when rescued. Whether his hair was clean or not, Goku and perhaps the others might notice.  
  
 _Well_ , Hakkai reasoned, _it wasn’t their business and shouldn’t matter_. He thought he might give himself a quick cleanup at the inn if Hazel was still showing off, however.  
  
Lienhua was talking.   
  
“So you guys be careful, will you? There,” she said in a quiet voice, giving his head a final dab. “And... I dunno. Watch that Priest Hazel guy. Religious freaks bug me. I heard what he was saying, about killing all the youkai.”  
  
“Don’t you agree with him?” Hakkai said, feeling disingenuous as he was reminded once again how he’d kept his nature from her. She’d never mentioned his ear cuffs. It seemed the sort of thing she might notice, if only to tease him about it.  
  
“Eh. I don’t know. I had youkai friends, before, you know? _All_ guys can be assholes. I’ve known a few who’d be better off sliced to bits than alive. In this town, even.”  
  
“Will you stay?” Hakkai asked, and patted his damp head without meaning to. It wasn’t too wet, and should dry enough in the drive back so as not to raise unnecessary questions.  
  
“Hell, no. Soon’s this... thing is over, I’m going east. What do you think of that?”  
  
“That sounds like a good plan.” Hakkai was tired of saving and leaving. He wasn’t even quite convinced that what he’d done here had been a good thing. Still, it was done, and he felt less defiled than he might. _How selfish._  
  
“Except you, of course. What I said before.” After this near non-sequitur, Lienhua bent to pet her cat as he gobbled food from his bowl. Then she stood again and stretched her arms towards the ceiling with a massive, happy grin. “God! I feel like I could do anything.”  
  
A survivor. _Goodbye, nothing personal miss._  
  
Hakkai smiled when he left, carrying his friends’ clothing, and smiled more when Jeep greeted him with a happy _kyuuuuu_ at the dirt road.   
  
  
**End.** _Thanks for reading! Concrit, flames, comments, all welcomed and cherished._


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